Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Serving up a storm

In Australia, an Italian chef was sacked for refusing to put pineapple on pizza. But recipes everywhere are changing. Can we protect traditions as cuisines evolve?

Would you put pineapple on your pizza? I ask because this has become a burning question in the food world (and on non-foodie mainstream media too) after an incident in the Australian city of Brisbane.

Here’s what happened. An Italian chef called Davide Tamburella was sacked from La Costa, a local restaurant, because he refused to put pineapple on a pizza. According to the restaurant’s managing director Elliot Ingram (whose name does not sound Italian), Tamburella was a repeat offender who had refused to top his pizza with pineapple on two previous occasions.

Tamburella told an employment tribunal that it was against his culture to make a pineapple pizza and claimed that he had been sacked unfairly. La Costa has since closed down, which is a pity because it might have benefited from the headlines generated by the controversy. (How many other restaurants in Brisbane can you name?)

Tamburella told a tribunal that pineapple pizzas were against his culture. La Costa has since shut down.

I am entirely on Tamburella’s side, but the issue does raise several important issues. First of all, isn’t the customer always right? In my view: No, they are not. If they want to order something that is not on the menu then it is up to the chef to decide whether he or she wants to make it or not. The customer has no right to make off-menu demands.

Secondly, should chefs be so sensitive about the sanctity of their pizzas (or their food in general)?

It’s a question that comes up again and again. In 2017, an Italian chef was sacked by a French bistro because he refused to overcook his pasta and insisted on serving it the way Italians eat it: Al dente. More significantly, he also refused to make Spaghetti Bolognaise, arguing that he was from Bologna and the dish was unknown in his hometown.

In 2017, an Italian chef was sacked for refusing to make spaghetti Bolognaise, a dish unknown in Bologna. (ADOBE STOCK)

He was right about that, at least. Spaghetti Bolognaise was invented outside of Italy. There is a pasta dish that has traditionally been served with ragu in Bologna. But the pasta is always tagliatelle, not spaghetti. And the ragu is completely different from the rubbish tomato-keema Bolognese sauce that goes into Spaghetti Bolognaise.

Italians are always on the side of chefs who oppose the garbage-isation of Italian cuisine, though it may be a losing battle. But that leads us to the third important question raised by this controversy: If chefs are going to be so inflexible about dishes and recipes, how does a cuisine ever progress beyond its origins?

The Italian food writer Luca Cesari offers the example of Gino Sorbillo, one of Italy’s greatest pizza chefs. Sorbillo made a Pizza Bianca with no tomatoes, and experimented with pineapple toppings. And the avant-garde pizza chef Franco Pepe uses pineapple. Though, to be fair, Pepe makes a pizza cone filled with San Daniele ham and cheese fondue. The pineapple is at the bottom of the cone.

Meanwhile, customers expect a Bangladeshi chef to make a Goan Vindaloo. (ADOBE STOCK)

So, why is it okay for great Italian pizza chefs to use pineapple? And why does a restaurant manager in Australia become a philistine when he sacks a chef for refusing to put pineapple on a pizza? What’s the difference?

Well, to use an Indian parallel, it’s the difference between Himanshu Saini playing around with pani puri and a chef in a Bangladeshi curry house in the British Midlands making a Madras curry with curry powder and extra red chilli. Or let’s use a Chinese parallel: It’s the difference between asking a chef from Sichuan to use local pomfret rather than snapper in the classic dish of fish with chilli oil, and asking him to make Chicken Manchurian.

Chefs must experiment and try new flavour combinations. But you cannot expect a serious chef to make junk food or to cook dishes that are entirely unknown in his or her homeland and exist only in foreign countries as a bastardisation of the cuisine.

You wouldn’t ask a chef from Sichuan to make Chicken Manchurian. (ADOBE STOCK)

Unfortunately, this has now become a rich-poor thing. An Italian chef cooking in Australia or France can afford to refuse demands to make junk food. If he is punished for his intransigence, he can go to a tribunal and get justice. Or he can just find another job.

But that is not true of South Asians. The chef in a Bangladeshi curry house in the British Midlands needs the money. He cannot afford to be put back on the next plane to Dhaka or Delhi. He simply does not have the means to stand up for real South Asian food even when he is asked to make bogus dishes such as a vindaloo that no Goan will recognise or a prawn patia that no Parsi has ever eaten before.

Within South Asia, we have found our own solutions. Rare is the Chinese restaurant in India where an actual Chinese person works in the kitchen. So it is with Italian restaurants and Italians. It is only at expensive hotel restaurants that you will find food cooked by people who understand the cuisine and know what dishes are supposed to taste like. The rest of the time, the chefs have rarely even eaten the genuine article, let alone cooked it.

The avant garde chef Franco Pepe uses pineapple in his pizza cone.

Which, I guess, is okay. Because India is different and our versions of foreign cuisines are our own. Now that the world is full of stories admiring the Italian chef who refused to put pineapple on a pizza what, I wonder, would the world make of Indian pizzas. I was looking at the menu of the Indian outposts of Pizza Hut, one of the world’s largest pizza chains. Here are just some of the pizzas on the menu:

Chatpata Chicken Pizza

Chilli Paneer Sizzle Pizza

Ultimate Tandoori Veggie Pizza

Paneer Makhni Masala Pizza

Mazedaar Makhni Paneer Pizza

Masala Keema Garlic Bread

Indian pizza comes with butter chicken and paneer makhni toppings. (SHUTTERSTOCK)

Any Italian looking at this menu would pass out. The pizzas are roughly as authentic as Daler Mehndi is Italian. If Tamburella had been asked to make any of these pizzas, he would gladly have made that pineapple pizza instead.

None of this is to say that these pizzas are not tasty. I will never eat them, so I will never find out. But presumably lots of people order them and enjoy them, so good luck to them.

But when I see menus like these, I have two thoughts. I can see why Italians are worried. They fear that unless they take a stand, Italian food all over the world will end up like this.

My second and final thought is: It’s already too late for Italian food. They can’t turn back the clock. Even if Italian chefs refuse to go along with all this (as they should) there are enough foreign chefs and restaurants to make sure that this process continues.

Masala Mazedaar Spaghetti anyone?

From HT Brunch, November 14, 2026

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